


A Reflection on the Past as the Future Blooms.

by BunnyJess



Category: Batman: Arkham (Video Games), Batman: Arkham - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham Knight Genesis (Comics), Red Hood: Lost Days
Genre: Adoption, Arkham Knight doesn't happen, Education, Falling In Love, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Graduation, Happy Family, Love, M/M, Medical School, Oxford University - Freeform, Plan J is rubbish, Reflection on the past, Talia is a good mum, art student, brief mention of torture, mentions of plastic surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 09:27:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16282019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BunnyJess/pseuds/BunnyJess
Summary: The Joker kept Jason in a hidden room in Arkham for a year. Instead of escaping or being rescued by Bruce, Talia is the one who swoops in and finds the second Robin. She makes it her mission to give him the life he really wanted. That even includes a baby brother who loves him more than the world.This is Jason's reflection on all that's happened in seven short years.





	A Reflection on the Past as the Future Blooms.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I am still salty about RHatO#25 and #27. No I will not stop writing Bruce as an ass. I just might throw in the odd GoodDad!Bruce fics...this isn't one of them.

As Jason sat in his bedroom he reflected over all he’d achieved over the last few years and realised just how proud of himself he should be. He’d had a shitty start in life that ended in him kidnapped and tortured for a cause he no longer believed in. He learnt how his father had replaced him and then ignored that kid to the point he was now spending more time with his team across the country than in Gotham.

The thing that had tortured him was still alive, albeit rotting in Arkham. He’d spent a year in a coma after Talia had snuck into the old abandoned wing of the mental asylum. He’d been nursed back to health by one of the deadliest women in the world and was convinced she’d want him to carry on his father’s crusade once he was fighting fit.

Talia had, instead, surprised him. She paid for a plastic surgeon to fix the J shaped scar on his cheek as best they could. When considering the amount the surgery cost he wasn’t surprised when he woke up and learnt he couldn’t see the disgusting disfigurement at all. It gave him a new lease on life and a boost to his confidence.

Talia had become a mother to him when he’d desperately needed a parental figure and, after realising she loved him as much as she loved her biological son, she formally adopted him while organising him with a new identity. Damian had taken to his older brother quicker than she’d ever seen him take to anyone. The boy was just under a year old when he first met Jason, who was eighteen at the time, and the two quickly became inseparable.

For the first year of Damian’s life Talia had managed to keep him a secret from Ra’s as she knew just how her father would use her son, would try to mould him into a weapon and then use him as a vessel for what was left of his pitiful soul. As soon as Jason showed no interest in the violence or fighting required of the League but instead a thirst for knowledge she knew how to best keep her boys safe. Utilising one of her most trusted assassins Talia sent her boys off to England.

Talia had watched Jason absorb every piece of written knowledge he could find while also allowing his caring side to develop with his little brother. When she approached him about leaving with Damian and getting a university education he suddenly withdrew from her. It was only after sitting him down and explaining how she wasn’t sending him away because she didn’t want him anymore but because she knew he could do so much more with his life if he got the chance to study the way he wanted that he finally accepted.

After hours of discussion Jason chose medicine which led to hours of intensive study for the pair while they discovered which university provided the both the best education and the best chance. In the end he picked Oxford. He knew it’d be a long six years with hours upon hours of study and stress but no decision had ever felt as right as that one.

Now here he sat, six years later and realised just how much he’d accomplished. His little brother was thriving at school, making too many friends for Jason to keep track of. Talia had managed to visit for both their birthdays and Christmas every year they’d been gone; proving to Jason that not every parental figure wanted him gone. Jason was also graduating at the top of his class and had secured a Foundation Year 1* post within the Oxford University Hospitals. His first rotation was in the cardiology department within John Radcliffe Hospital. He was excited as he knew he’d be working under some of the top cardiologists in the world, even if it was only for three months before he moved on to his next rotation.

Jason had approached his advisor in the School of Medicine as he’d been worried about having to leave Oxford, and Damian, for his two foundation years. They had helped him draft a letter outlining how he was his brother’s primary carer due to problems within his family. The letter helped the Foundation Office to place him within Oxford with a view to try and keep him within an hour’s commute of Damian’s schools. They understood the difficulty that would come with having to change schools every three or four months for someone who was only eight and, as their top student, they were willing to make exceptions. Plus Talia had donated a large sum of money to the both the University and Oxford NHS Services, although Jason didn’t know that.

It was a knock on his door that pulled him from his thoughts and had him pulling on his tailored white shirt. As he pulled the door open, his shirt still undone, a smile lit up his face when he saw who’d knocked. Stood at his bedroom door was his partner, Carwyn, who pushed him back into the room and kicked the door shut behind him.

Carwyn was 5’11’’ Welshman with red hair and grey eyes. He had multiple tattoos and piercings, many of which he’d gotten with Jason, and was regularly seen in scuffed up clothes that were covered in paint. The two men had met when Jason’s friends dragged him to a party hosted by some of the art students during his second year when Carwyn was in his first. They’d danced around each other for a few months causing both their friendship groups to merge and then force them into a blind date with one another. They’d been together ever since and were moving, with Damian, into a house a few streets over a week before Jason started his job.

He’d come over tonight as Talia had flown in to celebrate Jason completing his BM BCh** and Carwyn completing his Masters in Literature and Arts. When they’d video called her to tell her that Jason was graduating with a First and Carwyn with a Distinction Talia had been visibly shaking with excitement and pride for her son and the man he loved.

It hadn’t surprised anyone when she called saying she was coming to visit. She’d arrived that morning and the family for three had spent the day wandering around Oxford town centre. Carwyn had met Talia many times over the years and always made a point to let Jason spend time with her when she first arrived, despite how much both protested his choice as he was family to them both too.

Dressed up in immaculate suits, Talia wearing a gorgeous red dress that matched Jason and Damian’s ties, the four of them went out into the warm evening to have a meal. As Jason looked around the table he thought back over his life with Bruce, Dick, and Alfred and knew that he’d sooner be with everyone presently than those he’d once called family.

Here he felt accepted and included from the first day. There had been no screaming matches to hide from. Damian had wanted to be his brother from their first meeting. Carwyn was the love of his life and he was planning to propose at the graduation ceremony for his Masters.

Talia was the mother, the parent, he’d always desperately wanted. He’d never once had to put his own life on hold to provide for her. It was just the opposite; she’d done everything in her power to give Jason the life _he_ wanted. He’d never felt confined to a role or to be a different person just to get a few seconds of praise.

Unlike Bruce she told him how much she loved, cared for, and was proud of him every time they spoke. She’d risked the wrath of her father by smuggling him out of the League, by stopping the grand plans Ra’s had to use him as manipulation and ammunition towards Bruce. Talia had trusted Jason with her son to the point that once he started school she’d made him Damian’s legal guardian and the assassin who’d lived with them had returned to her side within the League. She trusted him with raising the boy, something he knew Bruce would never have done as he’d struggled to trust Jason due to his differences from Dick.

Jason used to think that his life had ended at fifteen and his current one was a fluke of the universe. Now he saw it as him coming alive at fifteen. Sure he’d been horrifically tortured by a psychotic clown and lost a year to a coma. That hadn’t mattered though. All the clown had managed to do was cause him to reach the life he’d always meant to have, the family he was meant to have.

Everything that came before felt like it had happened to a different person or in a past life. He had never had the happiness he’d had for the past seven years at any other time in his life. A thought struck him then, how he’d exclaimed that being Robin gave him magic when he’d first pulled it on; he saw that magic for what it was now. The magic Robin had granted him was the ability to find a family who wanted him and a life that was all his own.

 

 

 

* This is the first year after graduating where you have a provisional licence to be a doctor from the General Medical Council. It consists of three to four placements within different specialities with at least one being General Medicine.

** Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery is the qualification you achieve when graduating from the full six years of Oxfords School of Medicine.


End file.
